Abstract

The article shows that an ethics of distant emergencies can justify duties of assistance under recourse to reasons of humanitarian morals as well as corrective justice. After providing a notion of severe emergencies, I argue that such duties of assistance have global scope. But a comprehensive conception of duties of assistance could be understood neither as a conception of moral duties of assistance alone nor as a mere conception of duties of corrective justice. It rather has to combine duties of humanitarian morals and corrective justice to cover all cases of severe emergencies. Three principles to specify responsibilities resulting from such duties of assistance for different cases of emergency are suggested.